But all such personal plights and predicaments, ominous night-sights and sleepwalks, were soon almost forgot, became hazy in memory, as the extent of the general calamity was realized and a desperate rush to correct it began.
There were loved ones to be chafed, lost sheep to be succored — aye, and half-frozen shepherds too and other sleepers-out — cold ovens to be cleared of summer stowage and fired, kindling cut and seacoal shoveled, winter clothes dug from the bottoms of chests, strained moorings doubled and trebled of ships tossing at their docks and anchors, hatches battened in roofs and decks, lone dwellers visited.
When there was time for talk and wondering, some guessed that Khahkht the Wizard of Ice was on a rampage, others that the invisible winged Princes of lofty Stardock were out raiding, or — alarmist! — that the freezing glacial streams had at last tunneled through Nehwon's crust and dowsed her inner fires. Cif and Afreyt looked to find answers at the full moon ceremony, and when Mother Grum and the Senior Council canceled it on grounds of inclement weather (it being held outdoors), went on with their preparations anyway. Mother Grum raised no objections, believing in freedom of worship, but the Council refused it formal sanction.
So, it was no great wonder that the congregation that gathered before the chimes-arch of the open Moon Temple, with its twelve stone columns marking the year's twelve moons, was such a small one: in the main, exactly those who had dined at Afreyt's the previous evening and been pressed to attend by her and Cif. Those two were there, of course, being ringleaders of the outlaw rite, snug in their winter-priestess garb of white fur-hooded robes, mittens, and wool-lined ramskin boots. The five girls came as obedient novices, though it would have been hard to keep them away from what they considered a prize adventure. They wore like gear, only with shorter capes, so that from time to time their rosy knees showed, and the weird weather made Fingers's lamb's hide yashmack and gloves highly appropriate. Fafhrd and Mouser came as their ladies’ lovers, although they'd spent a hard day working, first at Afreyt's, then at their barracks. Both looked a little distant-minded, as though each had begun to remember the nightmares that had accompanied their strange nightcrawlings. Skullick and Pshawri turned up with them. Presumably their captains had reinforced with commands the entreaties of their captains’ mistresses, though Pshawri had an oddly intent look, and even the carefree Skullick a concerned one.
Ourph had not been pressed by anyone to attend, in view of his great age, but he was there nevertheless, close-wrapped in dark Mingol furs, with conical black-fur cap and sealskin boots to which small Mingol snowshoes were affixed.
Harbormaster Groniger too, whose atheism might have been expected to keep him away. He said in explanation, “Witchery is always my business. Though arrant superstition, three out of four times it's associated with crime-piracy and mutiny at sea, all manner of ill-workings on land. And don't tell me about you moon priestesses being white witches, not black. I know what I know."
And in the end Mother Grum showed up herself, fur-bundled to the ears and waddling on snowshoes larger than Ourph's. “It's my duty as coven mistress,” she grumbled, “to get you out of any scrapes your wild behavior gets you into and to see that in any case no one tries to stop you.” She glared amiably at Groniger.
With her came Rill the Harlot, also a moon priestess, whose maimed left hand gave her a curious sympathy (unmixed with lechery, or so ‘twas thought) with Fafhrd, who'd lost his entirely.
These fifteen, irregularly grouped, stood looking east across the sharp-serrated snow-shedding gables of the small, low, close-set houses of Salthaven, awaiting moonrise. They rapidly shuffled their feet from time to time to warm them. And whenever they did, the massy gray slabs of the sacred wind chime chain-hung from the lofty single-bone leviathan-jaw arch seemed to vibrate faintly yet profoundly in sympathy, or in memory of their earlier hollow clanking when the gale had blown, or perhaps in anticipation of the Goddess's near apparition.
When the low glow of that approach intensified toward a central area above the toothed roofs, the nine females drew somewhat apart from the six males, turning their backs on them and crowding together closely, so that the invocatory words Afreyt whispered might not be overheard by the men, nor the holy objects Cif drew from under her wide cloak and showed around be glimpsed by them.
Then, when a dazzlingly white fingernail clipping of the orb's self, serrated by the teeth of the central-most roof, showed, there was a general sigh of recognition and fulfillment which was echoed inanimately by an intensification of the chimes’ real or imagined low vibrations, and the groups broke up and intermingled and joined hands in one long line, the girls leading with May at their head, the rest linked at random, and the whole company began a slow rhythmic circling of the Temple, twice all the way around, then interweaving the carven stone moon pillars — that of the Snow, the Wolf, the Seed, the Witch, the Ghost, the Murderer, the Thunder, the Satyr, the Harvest, the Second Witch, the Frost, and the Lovers — by sixes, by fours, by threes, by two, and individually.
The girls wove their way one after the other, linked hand to hand, gracefully as in a dream. Old Ourph footed it agilely, stamping out the time, while Mother Grum moved briskly for all her fat and with a surprisingly sure rhythm. Rill brought up the rear, swinging a leviathan-oil lamp, unlit, from her maimed hand.
As the moonlight slowly strengthened, Fingers marveled somewhat fearfully at the strange Rimish runes and savage scenes carved in the thick moon pillars. Gale squeezed her hand reassuringly and told her in whispered snatches how they represented the adventures of the legendary witch queen Skeldir when she descended into the Underworld to get the help that enabled her to turn back the three dire Simorgyan invasions in the Isle's olden days.
When the seven slow mystic circlings had been completed and the glaringly white orb of Skama (the Goddess's holiest name) fully arisen, so that sky-black hugged her all around, May led the weaving line out across the great meadow to the west, moving forward confidently in the full moonshine. For a short way the shadows of the twelve pillars and the jaw-hung chime accompanied them, then they launched out one by one across the trackless moonlit expanse, the frozen and snow-dusted grass crackling under their feet. May followed a serpentine course, veering now left, now right, that copied their last pillar-weaving, but went straight west, their shadows preceding them.
And then Afreyt called out in vibrant tones the sacred name, “Skama!” and they all began to chant, in time to their dancing advance, the first song to the Goddess:
Their voices fell silent for five beats, Afreyt again called, “Skama!” and they began Her second song, their steps becoming longer and more gliding to suit the changed rhythm: